The Sleeping and the Dead (39 page)

‘Mel might have let it go but she saw the photo of Theo on the local news in the pub on her way to the airport. She recognized him. Redwood was plastered with pictures of the kids
who’d stayed there. The coincidence freaked her out. And she couldn’t understand why Arthur didn’t go to the police about the Redwood connection. Later that week the press reports
were still talking about the mysterious boy with no past. She phoned him again and said that if he didn’t tell the police Michael had been at Redwood, she would. He must have been frantic but
he still thought he could reason with her. He couldn’t get to her at home. She was so disturbed by then that her parents almost had her under house arrest. So he became more devious. He even
followed Rosie and Joe home from the Prom one night, hoping they might lead him to Mel. At last he found her in the Rainbow’s End. He persuaded her there was a reasonable explanation for
keeping quiet about Theo. If she went back with him he’d tell her all about it. But whatever story he’d dreamed up she wouldn’t accept it. She was hysterical . . .’

‘And he killed her.’

‘In his cottage.’ Porteous hesitated, seemed to make up his mind to continue. ‘The next night he took her body to the cemetery at Millhaven. He knew you’d been there. You
were already a suspect and he wanted to implicate you.’

She sat in silence for a moment wondering how she could have been so foolish, so easily taken in. ‘What about Rosie?’ she asked. ‘She can’t have known anything about all
that.’

‘Rosie suspected him.’

‘How could she?’

‘Arthur got to know a nasty little boy inside, thought he might be useful.’

‘Hunter.’ Marty knew, she thought. Or guessed. It was impossible to keep secrets in prison. He’d wanted her to know too.

‘Hunter went to see Frank at the pub and persuaded him it wouldn’t be a good idea to remember the man who’d been looking for Mel. We thought Frank was uncooperative because he
didn’t like the police, but it was more than that. Rosie got an accurate description out of him.’

‘Arthur.’

Porteous nodded. ‘Later Frank had second thoughts and told Hunter what he’d done.’

‘And Arthur told Hunter to kill her?’

Porteous didn’t answer directly. ‘Hunter recognized the name. Got greedy.’

‘How did you work it all out?’
In time to save my daughter
.

‘Dr Cornish had saved a book from Redwood. It was a record of all the kids she’d worked with, but Arthur’s name was in the staff register at the back. I missed it first time.
And his car was seen close to Alec Reeves’s house on the night he was murdered. By then Arthur was panicking, desperate to throw suspicion elsewhere. Like Mel, Alec was starting to ask
questions . . .’

There was a silence. ‘Rosie’s tough,’ Porteous said. ‘Brave. She’ll be OK.’

Perhaps, Hannah thought. But will I? She looked out over the flat water to the hills on the opposite bank. In a few weeks her reckless daughter would be away to university. She’d live on
her own and Hannah wouldn’t know where she was or what she was doing. Hannah would retreat to the safety of the prison with its rules and its walls, but Rosie would dance and shimmy through
the strange town in the south and there’d be nothing Hannah could do to protect her.

As Peter Porteous filled her glass his hand touched hers. ‘Really,’ he said. ‘She’ll be OK.’

Yes, Hannah thought. Of course we will. Both of us.

Ann Cleeves lives in West Yorkshire with her husband and their two daughters. As a member of the ‘Murder Squad’, she works with other Northern writers to promote
crime fiction.

She is also the author of the Inspector Ramsay series. More recently she has turned to writing psychological suspense novels, of which
The Crow Trap
was the first, followed by
The
Sleeping And The Dead.
Her latest novel,
Burial of Ghosts,
will be available in Macmillan hardback in early 2003.

By the same author

A Bird in the Hand

Come Death and High Water

Murder in Paradise

A Prey to Murder

A Lesson in Dying

Murder in my Backyard

A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy

Another Man’s Poison

Killjoy

The Man on the Shore

Sea Fever

The Healers

High Island Blues

The Baby-Snatcher

The Crow Trap

First published 2001 by Macmillan

This edition published 2002 by Pan Books
This electronic edition published 2011 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-0-330-54052-0 EPUB

Copyright © Ann Cleeves 2001

The right of Ann Cleeves to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital,
optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be
liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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